She turned her head on his chest and opened her eyes. There was another horseman, clad all in white. Even his hair and his face looked white in the moonlight. Rebecca! Ceris’s stomach felt as if it turned a complete somersault.
She turned her head the other way as both horses galloped off so that she would not have to see Rebecca. And she clung harder. They had been shot at! The truth of it was only just beginning to hit her. She still had her eyes open as the horses turned to go uphill again. Three men on foot watched them go by. She wondered that they were standing motionless and were still so close to the road. Crowds of men had been fleeing when she had been on her way down.
Several moments passed before the fact registered on her brain that one of the three men—the one whose eyes she had met—was Matthew. The truth dawned upon her at the same moment. He had used her to lead him to Rebecca and all her followers. To Aled. If anyone had been caught or hurt, it would have been her foolish fault.
She remembered Marged’s concern that inadvertently she might betray some of her knowledge, and her own indignation that her friend should think she could ever do such a thing.
She might have killed Aled tonight. She buried her face against his chest again, moved her hands higher up his back, and tightened her hold.
Two things happened simultaneously. His breath hissed in through his teeth. And her right hand encountered something warm and wet and sticky.
She did not move. She was afraid to move a muscle. “You have been shot,” she said against his dark gown.
“It is nothing,” he said, though the sound of his voice gave the lie to his words. “I will have you home and safe in no time, Ceris. Just hold tight.”
She moaned. “No. Stop, Aled,” she said. “You have been shot. You are bleeding.”
“I’ll get you home,” he said. “There is pursuit. Idris brought word. You were bringing the same message?”
“No!” Her voice was agonized. “We have passed them already. They are far behind and on foot. There were three of them. I led them to you.”
“You?” His breathing was labored.
“They followed me.” She could hear that she was wailing and could not stop herself. “Aled, you have been shot. Because of me.”
“Hush,” he said. “Hush. I am going to take you home.”
“No,” she said. She turned her head again to see that they were not far from home. “No, I am coming home with you. You are going to need me. You have been hit.”
He did not argue. He rode incautiously into Glynderi and around to the back of the smithy, where his horse was stabled and where the door into his living quarters was situated. Ceris jumped down as soon as the horse came to a halt, and reached up her arms to assist Aled. He looked so strange in his women’s clothes and with his face blackened, a part of her mind thought. He slid down awkwardly from the saddle, his left arm curled against his chest, while she tried to steady him and break his fall if his legs did not support him. But he stayed on his feet and even managed to see to his horse, with Ceris’s help, before they went into the house.
The bullet had gone through his shoulder. They discovered that after Ceris had somehow got him out of the dark robe and had peeled back his blood-soaked shirt and dabbed away some of the dried blood with a dampened cloth.
“There is a hole at the front,” he said faintly. “There must be one at the back too, Ceris. They shot at me from behind.”
“Yes, there is,” she said. Now that she was doing something she felt calm again, though she knew that reaction would set in later. A few inches lower . . .
“The bullet is out, then,” he said. “But do you realize, Ceris, that it must have just about gone through your head?”
Her stomach did a strange flip-flop, but her hand was steady with the cloth. “But it did not,” she said.
Before she had finished cleaning the wound and somehow bandaging pads over both bullet holes to stanch any further bleeding, he had his eyes closed and she could see even beneath the blackening on his face that he was as pale as parchment.
Her mind had become even calmer. “There may be a search,” she said. “We must get your face cleaned up, Aled, and we must hide or get rid of these clothes. We must get your shoulder covered up. Where will I find a nightshirt?”
He looked at her with pain-heavy eyes.
It took her half an hour to accomplish everything. All the time she listened for any telltale noises from the street. Perhaps they would do a house-to-house search, especially if they suspected that they had wounded one of Rebecca’s daughters. But there was nothing. She had made Aled lie down in bed, though he had watched everything she did. She looked around her at last. It looked like a normal bachelor’s home.
“What were you doing on that road, Ceris?” he asked.
“Betraying you,” she said.
He looked steadily at her and she looked back from across the room.
“And yet,” he said, “you have patched me up and hidden all the evidence for me. Tell me the truth now.”
And so she told the truth, standing quietly, her arms at her sides. All the truth, including the fact that she had become engaged to Matthew Harley during the afternoon.
